


Denmark

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Character Study, Comedy, Culture, Culture Shock, Dating, Death, Europe, F/F, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, Hidden Depths, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love, Love/Hate, Marriage, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24752068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: Kang Seulgi doesn't think she will fall in love very much at all, living in a canal-side apartment in Copenhagen with a group of cold, realistic and Scandinavian friends, until Kim Yerim comes along, and wears her down over nearly three years
Relationships: Kang Seulgi/Kim Yerim | Yeri
Kudos: 4





	Denmark

**Author's Note:**

> For you. Jeg elsker dig, jeg elsker dette  
> X  
> Hit me up on Instagram at @theartoftootimingyou

Seulgi liked Denmark. That was it. So very simple, and so very wholesome that answer. She liked Denmark. She liked it's darkness and psychopathy and coldness and abruptness; she liked it's history and it's paganism and it's alcoholism. She liked the blithe starkness of it's Evangical Lutheranism, and she laughed at the sights of the urination and paint stains that people left around the churches all over the small, small country and in Copenhagen, or, as they called it, Kobenhavn. 

Seulgi spoke good Danish, and, she had lots of Danish friends of whom she both loved and loathed. They were apalling and rude and harsh but they were soft-lidded, and warm deep down, coals burning in an aga stove, turned on the high-low slow-burn for the cold winter-times.

Seulgi expected to settle down with a Danish person - man or woman - rather than a Korean - man or woman - also in Denmark. But things never turn out how one expects them to. A matter sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Yerim was a surprise, and, overtime, Seulgi had changed. The Danish with their Scandinavian racial identity and therefore their behaviours and tendencies and perception had worked it's way into her body and her bones. Once upon a time, Seulgi might have easily glided in and talked to Yerim, moved with her so honestly and openly. Things would have been sweet, like roses blooming in the wintergarten. But the Scandinavian's had brought Seulgi realism, common sense, brutality, and generally a insight into people's behaviour and their own harsh, sarcasm, selfishness, ignorance, arrogance, and misdemeanours. It had made Seulgi mature, cultivated, cultured, graceful and strong.

The direct opposite to a much more naive, soft and stupid Yerim. No one else on Earth would the opinion that Yerim was inclined to a minor stupidity, but that was what Seulgi thought, her upper lip curling viciously as her Danish friends - Edvard, Matthias, Gerda, Ilsa, Huarya and Fey - watched on. 

Seulgi met Yerim at a ball that Seulgi opined that Yerim had no place at being at. The evening was held in celebration for the revival of Art-Deco influenced fashion and culture which was then inspired by one of Denmark's most famous artists - Frederik Grieg-Havn - to give a thirty-painting full show. Seulgi came with her friend Matthias, who was a enormous man in the Germanic style of human-genetics at six-foot-five-inches with chiseled traditional Western European features. His small, slightly upcurved pale irised eyes with dark yellow-blonde hair, a handsomely boned ovular face with a thin mouth and a thin nose that might have a slight bump along the bridge of it with thin straight brows and very large hands with a deep, strong chest and neck. Seulgi thought she couldn't have done any better than been seen at the evening with Matthias. Edvard - her other close male friend - was very dear, but, he was very, very ill. He had lung cancer and was almost as tall as Matthias, but as thin as a Tim Burton novella sketch. He had a angular face with a wide and flat full mouth like all Danes had, with thick straight eyebrows, deep brown eyes like a grazing cow, and pale, pasty skin with a smattering of equally paled freckles awent across. He had dark brown hair, and needed a walking stick, along with his oxygen tank. His nose sometimes bled for no reason, leading to at least always one stained handkerchief in his evening jacket or a concealed pocket in his trousers. Seulgi felt desperately sorry for him; not a single young woman in the world would go anywhere near him, and, that night, not a single young woman in the world would dance with him. Except herself, Gerda, Ilsa, Huarya and Fey. All of them were going to dance with Edvard at one stage in the night, unless he caught on to what they were doing and dimissed them with harsh words - one by one - until, how many young women down, he simply had no words left at all for them.

Seulgi divided the rest of the girls up. Ilsa was from Norway, and therefore a completely different race mix with her white-blonde hair, her attractive wide and flat face with wide-set crystalline blue eyes and her pink lips on her delicate modelesque figure. Gerda was of Swedish descent, and had a gentle square face with a warm skin-tone, hair the colour of Sequoia bark, thin striaght eyebrows, hooded eyes, softly moudled cheekbones with a sharp jaw and a thin but full mouth with her button-mushroom nose. Huarya had dyed black hair she beaded and locked back in a traditional Scandinavian Pagan style, and her face was quite alike Ilsa's though Hyurya swore blind that were family were Icelandic before coming to Denmark, not Norse. Then, there was Fey, who dyed her hair the most delicate lavender, and had a thick-boned, Neolithic face with olive-toned skin, big lips, sharp, dangerous eyes, and thick arching eyebrows. Fey wasn't her real name; Fey's real name was Awerowen. They called her Fey was because her eyes changed colour depending on her mood. She was a anthropological wonder, her eyes bright azure green when sad, dark brown when happy, and grey-blue when she felt that she was in love with either a man, or the world about her.

The classical orchestra were playing the second Dansk waltz - Seulgi danced and smiled and talked with Edvard and Matthias danced with the portly and middle-aged wife of the museum's chief curator - when Seulgi first saw Yerim as Edvard twirled her about.

Yerim was wearing absolutely everything wrong. The invitation asked people to come in Art-Deco themed evening dress...and Yerim stood in a white dress with an empire waist, a v-neckline, thick straps, and the skirt was made from soft voile that went to just below her knees, to which she then wore tan-leather high-heeled boots, a diamond necklace with a black bow aorund her neck, and her hair sleekly pinned back with a diamond clip by one of her temples. She wore next to no make-up, except dark red lipstick and brown eye-makeup. Any other event, perhaps. 

"Have a look at that." Seulgi remarked deresively to Edvard.

"She's got a lovely face." Edvard replied kindly after a few moments. "What is she?"

"Hm?"

"Does she come from Korea like you? I can't tell all of you apart." Edvard said meekly. Seulgi smiled up at him. She looked at Yerim.

"Yeah, I think she's Korean." Seulgi said. "Maybe I'll sexually harrass her later."

Edvard chuckled softly. "No, Seulgi, that is not a good idea. She might hit you."

"I'll hit her." Seulgi raised an eyebrow coldly. Edvard gazed down at her.

"Don't worry." He said, his voice as soft as his laugh. "I'm ok, dear. Don't let all these worries fill you up. Be happy."

Seulgi's inside collapsed. She turned to stone. "Ok." She said barely humanly.

An hour later, she was sitting outside in one of the most beautiful gardens she had ever been able to spend time in on a cream-stone balcony the size of a university-student's apartment with a glass of wine and the bottle it came from. It had a railing carved classically, and Seulgi admired it in the semi-darkness. She felt numb and cold. Her joy of the evening had crashed down. The music inside was suddenly irritating and revolting; with it's trumpets and piano...

"Is it ok if I sit with you?" A voice asked out of nowhere. Seulgi gazed up coldly but surpisedly at the woman she came to know as Yerim.

"Yes." Seulgi answered. Yerim smiled and thanked her. Seulgi wondered what Matthias was doing. Probably coaxed to having a walk about the extended gallery with the wives of the museum officials. Matthias himself was an art dealer. Everything came together.

"Are you a painter?" Yerim asked, wanting to hold conversation. Seulgi would have denied her, but, Edvard was right. Yerim did have a lovely face. Seulgi hesitated replying.

"I do two styles of painting; oil paintings, and knife-paintings." Seulgi responded. "I write songs for bands independently. I don't work within record companies and otherwise labels."

Yerim's mouth dropped open and her eyes lit up. "Oh, wow! That is so cool!" She said. "Do you have any in this gallery?"

Naive, she does not know how this world works, Seulgi thought. "No." Seulgi said. "I sell my works through social media."

"What about your songs?" Yerim leant forward, her chin and face held in her hands.

"I go to the UK alot." Seulgi traced her index finger around the rim of her wine glass. Seulgi thought she looked that night, her long black hair drawn into a marcel-waved chignon and any loose hairs combed and lacquered back; she wore a black crew-neck dress with cuffed sleeves and the hem went to her mid-calves with a drop-waist; the black dress was covered in gold embroidery of pheonix birds and oriental forest scenes. She wore black high-heels in the old-world style with black stockings, and she had attracted gazes with her make-up. Black eye-makeup and red lipstick, gentle illuminations of high-lighter at the cupid's bow of her upper lip and at the highly-arched curved of her cheekbones. 

Yerim swallowed nervously, averting her gaze. "What sort of paintings do you like?" Seulgi ventured, not wanting a remorseful case on her hands. Yerim lit up once more. Seulgi nearly rolled her eyes. She knew she was a cunt of a human being.

"Oh, all sorts!" Yerim enthused. "I like proper paintings and the digital art ones."

Oh, God, no, not anime, Seulgi prayed silently.

"There's a artist on the internet - urgh, I can't think of his name -" Yerim giggled, temporarily holding her head in her hands.

And how about you don't make noises like a filthy fucking pig, Seulgi thought coldy, gazing at Yerim, one of her legs crossing over the other.

"But, he does paintings of Asian and Anglo models in the haute coutoure clothes - like, paintings of Choi So Ra at last year's SS show for example, things like that." Yerim grinned. "They're so pretty to look at."

God, I hate the way you say that word. "Pretty", Seulgi nearly scowled. She forced a smile.

"What's one of your songs?" Yerim asked. "Could I have heard one on the radio?"

Seulgi hesitated again. "I wrote one called "Be My Mistake"." She found herself admitting. Soflty, she sung it. Almost talking, but there was a little and a depth to her English words. She broke mistake in half.

"Come and be my high

Because I can't go down

Any lower than I would on

Lammas given night

I don't care

If you don't care

I love, you take

Be my mis-take

No honour, still take

Be my mis-take

Be my mis-take." When she finished, Seulgi couldn't help this feeling of shame washing over her. It happened so eloquently and deeply, that she shrunk in on herself.

"Oh!" Yerim emitted a sound almost like a song note itself. "You wrote for "The Sound"? No way!" She smiled widely. "I remember when that song came out! It was everywhere! Only a couple of months ago, right?"

Seulgi nodded curtly before she just started softly rapping off the top of her head.

"Go down by the seaside

It's the otherscapes tide

I don't care if you might

But don't you turn the time

I won't hold you down to fight

But you cannot try to mime

Loving me in front of my friends and then hating me

Fuck you're so cruel, hitting on my best friend

Bating me, bating me

Whatcha going to do but mess this up, oh-woah-oh-oh..."

Yerim burst out laughing. "Oh my God, did you just make that up off the top of your head?" She asked vibrantly.

Seulgi smiled a little bit, and kept it graceful. She nodded her head.

"So it's original?" Yerim checked. "Oh my God, will you actually remember that? Oh, shit, where's my phone - can you do it, again? Let's record it!"

That was how Yerim got Seulgi's phone number.

The ball had been held Friday evening, and Seulgi saw Yerim on Sunday evening. Yerim had found out where Seulgi had lived and had come about when Seulgi had been leaning out of her bedroom window that overlooked that Christenhaven harbour, smoking, when Yerim had walked down beneath her. Seulgi had just tapped some ash off the end of her cigarette, and she wasn't quite sure if the ash went into Yerim's hair or not.

"Hello!" Yerim waved upwardly. Seulgi raised her chin slightly.

"Good Evening." Seulgi said quietly. It was impossible for Yerim to have heard her. 

"What?!" Yerim called upwards. Seulgi rolled her eyes. She had just been wearing a silk petticoat, only from her waist-up able to be seen. Seulgi retreated inside and pulld her windows shut, before locking them, snapping down the latch. Seulgi pulled on her red silk dressing gown and went downstairs. Yerim looked quite put out when she opened the front door.

"I had to come down the stairs." Seulgi explained. Have some patience, for goodness sake! Seulgi added in her head. She brought Yeirm inside and put her in the sitting room. "Tea?" Seulgi asked. "How do you like it?" When Yerim nodded.

"What sort of tea do you have?" Yerim asked.

"I have many sorts of tea. Peppermint, English Breakfast, Green, Jasmine, Early Grey, Irish Breakfast, White, White With Strawberry and then the indistinguishable builder's tea." Seulgi replied. Yerim was dumbfounded.

"I'll pick." Seulgi decided for Yerim. She chose the White Tea With Strawberry and put in a teaspoon of sugar for Yerim's obvious shock at a centuries old home filled with antique furntiure, throws, cushions, photographs, paintings, books, vinyl record's, CD's, DVD's, painting canvas's, notebooks, and, possibly, one badly behaved West Highland Terrier. The girls - Gerda, Ilsa, Huarya and Fey - liked the kidnap the little dog as though he was their little dog and not Seulgi's little dog. Seulgi made a tea for herself as well, and brought them into the sitting room. Yerim was sitting nervously on the dark, dark red upholstered sofa with gold embroidery. Seulgi had a few lamps turned on - one on the bookshelf, one by the telelvision on it's huge cabinet, and one sitting on a pile of books by the window-seat that overlooked the canals - rather than the ceiling lights. Seulgi turned on the telelvision for something to play in the background. Yerim was wearing a grey knitted jumper with a light pink scarf and denim jeans tucked into the same boots she had worn to the evening at the gallery. She had on natural-styled make-up, but the depth of her pink lip-stick stood out by a mile. Seulgi ignored it.

"You have a little dog?" Yerim pointed to the tarten bed by the hearth of the fireplace. Seulgi hummed. "Where is he?"

"Been taken by a friend. They like to play with him." Seulgi answered. "He's a very behaved little dog. Forbidden to get up on the furniture."

"Why can't he get up on the furniture?" Yerim asked. Seulgi nearly slapped Yerim for her lack of common sense.

"There is nearly not a single item in this house under a hundred years old, and I will not have it ruined by a little West Highland Terrier spreading fur everywhere and clawing and biting things." Seulgi replied firmly. A silence settled between she and Yerim.

"You're, like, 60 years old in a 20 year olds body." Yerim remarked. Seulgi calmly took the mug of tea now half-empty from Yerim's hands.

"Get out of my bloody house before I smack you in the mouth you rude bloody bitch." Seulgi snarled lowly and animalistically. She didn't even have to chase Yerim from the front door, who screamed her head off before running away all by herself. Seulgi sighed, going back to her sitting room and sitting down on her sofa, her legs curled up beneath her. She drank the rest of her tea with her eyes closed, listening to the evening news in Danish play on the television and a vinyl record of "The Arsonist's Lullaby" by Hozier play on her gramophone by the windowseat. It began to pour rain, and the streaks fell eloquently and perfectly over the 19th century glass. Seulgi deleted every remain of Yerim from her phone, and turned off the device. 

Later that night, her phone buzzed with a text.

"You're friend, the one with the purple hair, when she saw me talking to you she told me that it wouldn't work out. I thought, why not? The girl with her wine is beautiful. I wish you're friend had just said outright that you had some serious mental health issues and needed to be assessed and then medicated."

The text was from Yerim, and it made Seulgi howl with rage. Seulgi swore blind that if she ever saw that bitch again she would throttle her neck.

The oppotunity came five months later. At a wedding, no less. Matthias's sister, Helena, was marrying, and he invited Seulgi along with the others as guests. Unknown to Seulgi, Helena owned the chain of clothes shop where Seulgi found out Yerim worked at as a manager.

Seulgi sat with Edvard - steadily sicker and more underweight - and Gerda in the seventh row of the eighteen pew-row Cathedral in Ebeltoft, claimed to be the most stunning village in all of Denmark. Yerim sat with a young man with red hair in the third row on the other side of the aisle. Seulgi wondered if she could find a bouqet and hit Yerim about the head with it...once she had hidden a lead weight or a hammer within, of course.

The ceremony was beautiful; Helena was as tall as her brother almost and had a gorgeous curved figure, comparible to only Nigella Lawson's. She wore a high-neck and long-sleeves lace dress with a fitted body - all made of white lace - with a row of buttons down the back and a fitted under-dress; the dress had a fishtail hem, that had a train nearly two feet long at the back. It was beautiful, and Helena looked beautiful with her arched eyebrows and her round face and her eyes, so alike her brother's and so hauntingly attractive. Her husband was English, and was handsome with a thin face with dark brown hair. Fey and Gerda thought he looked like Richard Armitage.

The reception was held at a enormous restaurant built within an old flour mill that had been converted with a dining peer going out onto a natural lake. Seulgi spotted Yerim standing outside with a glass of rose wine, overlooking the sun setting in the sky. She had a light-pink rose tucked behind one of her ears, her hair loose down her back. Yerim wore a light blue linen dress cut in a muslimah style with a fitted bodice, a loose straight skirt, a boat neck, and long-sleeves with a necklace like wooden balls then black binding around her neck, the balls teal of colour.

Seulgi felt hot and angry and sharp; she thought Yerim looked better in her dress compared to her own. Seulgi was wearing a dark red sleevless dress with it fitted to her body but from her ribs shaped downwards like a Edwardian-era walking skirt; over the top, she wore a black wrap-waist jersery top that was tightly-fitted to her body where a section of the red fabric beneath of her dress was shown. She had ruby earrings in her ears, red lipstick, and smudgy black eyes with her hair done the same as it had been at the gallery showing. 

Seulgi tapped Yerim on the shoulder, and the young woman had a dreamy, happy look on her face as she turned around. Her expression dropped as soon as she saw Seulgi, but Seulgi beat her to it.

"Beep-beep, motherfucker." Seulgi grinned broadly before punching Yerim in the face and throwing her over the low railing of the peer into the lake's cold waters. "Bitch." Seulgi remarked proudly and happily, checking the water below. Yerim had gone so deep that she hadn't resurfaced yet. Seulgi hummed to herself, dusting her hands off as she walked away.

Nine months later, Edvard died from his lung cancer. 

Seulgi could barely stand upright at his funeral in the little fishing village in Vejile where he was born. The ever stoic and strong and caring Matthias was pale and as still as marble. Edvard's had a open casket for an hour that morning, the wake held in their cottage home where Edvard had been born twenty-eight years earlier on the sitting room floor. Seulgi put a little letter full of words she wanted to tell Edvard and all she might ever want to tell him, and she went to sit down at the staircase. Tears rolled down her face as Matthias leant over the coffin and pressed a hand to Edvard's thin, cold chest, kissing his forehead.

"Unnie?"

Seulgi, her face covered with pink and white blotches and tear tracks, looked to see Yerim in a black skinny jeans and a black voile blouse with a black camisole beneath. She looked wordlessly at Yerim.

"Gerda invited me." Yerim leant against the rail of the staircase. "I'm so sorry."

Seulgi didn't say anything. She looked down to her high heeled shoes. She was wearing a tailored jacket, black turtleneck, and a black pencil skirt that went to her mid-calves with black stockings and black heels. Hair pinned up, make-up done...always the same. Always by herself.

"Could we start again?" Yerim asked. Seulgi turned her head to the side. She reached through the bars on the stair railing and touched the voile of Yerim's top.

"You've a nice blouse." Seulgi half mumbled. Yerim moved around and sat down on the stairs beside Seulgi. Seulgi leant her head against Yerim's shoulder.

"I miss him." Seulgi said. Yerim rested her head against Seulgi's.

"I know, darling." Yerim replied. Any other time, Seulgi would have scowled at that term, and would have delivered horrifically harsh words in response. But, now, it didn't seem so bad.

She was ashamed of herself, but, back then, she couldn't have known.

She looked to Edvard's open coffin. "Let's go over and talk to him." She stood up and smoother down her skirt with one hand, her other hand entwined with Yerim's. Holding hands, they walked over to the open casket. 

"Hey, love." Seulgi said, the backs of her fingertips tracing over Edvard's thin cold cheekbone gently. When a person died, they seemed fatter, their muscles and body having gone slack. Edvard's body did not seem so anorexic anymore, with that tiny roll under his chin from where his head sat on his chest. "I want to tell you something, sweetheart."

"Me and Seulgi are getting married." Yerim smiled, her eyes wet with tears, holding onto Suelgi's arm, resting her head against Seulgi's shoulder. Seulgi turned her head to look at Yerim's downward facing one. The breath had left her lungs silently and unnoticeably as Yerim gazed down at Edvard. Seulgi dared fate, dared how it could possibly go. How she wanted it to go.

"Yes, Yerim and I are getting married, sweetheart." Seulgi told Edvard. 

A month later, Seulgi and Yerim were married in Copenhagen. Seulgi wore a petticoat style lace and silk dress with a yellow ribbon tied around her waist and in her curled hair that was half pinned up by Fey, half not. Ilsa had made Seulgi's dress, while Huarya made Yerim's. Yerim's dress was a gorgeous cream-pink and was of the same style as Matthias's sister's dress, Helena. The fishtail skirt was made of lace fabric, and, Yerim had dyed her hair blonde for the occasion. 

Before they went on their honeymoon back in South Korea - something Yerim wanted to do - they went to Vejile in Yerim's silver 2010 Toyota Camary Altise. As was custom in Denmark, Seulgi wore her wedding ring on the band figner of her left hand, and, seeing as she and Yerim were both brides, the girls - Gerda, Ilsa, Huarya and Fey - had sewn them both new wardrobes. Seulgi was wearing one of the pieces; it was a navy coat with a high-neck in a Scandinavian Art-Deco style and bands around the edges of the sleeves. The bands and neck were made from a pretty embroidered black fabric, gold thread only. Seulgi had her hair pinned up, and, Yerim, who didn't seem to feel the cold, and enjoying absolutely everything, climbed out of the Toyota in a dark grey cotton drop-waist dress with a boat neck and long sleeves. 

"You're right, the Danes really have a thing for the Art-Deco, stuff." Yerim laughed. She squawked a second later. A newspaper that had been sitting on the console had been swept up by the wind and was blown out over the seaside cliffs of Vejile. Seulgi watched it silently fall and float through the air and then down to the sea while Yerim chattered on and laughed.

"That newspaper had our wedding and Edvard's death notice in it." She murmured softly, feeling as though something had been torn apart from her, but, perhaps it was for the best. Yerim awed softly.

"Yeah, but look at it fucking fly!" She crowed, hugging Seulgi to her. Seulgi grinned suddenly, though her eyes felt wet.

"We're ok. We're all ok." Yerim murmured softly in her ear, before kissing her cheek. Seulgi raised up a hand and waved to the newspaper, a spec just above the ocean.

"I love you." Seulgi murmured, to both Yerim, Edvard, her family, their family, all their friends, everyone in the whole wide world. "I love you."


End file.
